The Devout Woman

Torn between traditional and the Christian religions, Anyadwe, the wife of Ogwok, one of the pioneers of Christian faith in Coomit village, lead a stormy life with her posthumous son, Acellam. Because of her pious faith in the Christian faith she had received and in her dead husband Ogwok, Anyadwe rejected all the traditional inheritance marriage laws which were fronted to her by Opuk, the paternal uncle of her husband Ogwok. Opuk was a hard liner traditionalist, medicine man and soothsayer who chaired all the village elders meets. He was highly respected in the village because of these irreplaceable qualities. His prophecies were precise and his herbal medicines were indubitable. Nevertheless he abominated Christianity and called it white man hoax doctrine of dominancy over a black man land, cultures and integrities. Even if Anyadew gave due respect to Opuk leaderships as anyone else in the village did, their ideologies about Christian God and traditional gods were unmatchable. Notwithstanding the snappish differences between Anyadwe and Opuk, the village community appreciated their stands. As the results, most of villagers practiced both Traditional and the Christians faith because of Anyadwe and Opuk influence. Opuk oft en prophesied about the calamities to befall the village at the start of the year. These he always attributed to the disobedience of the villagers for the reason that the community had accepted the Christians God and has forsaken their own traditional gods whom they have been worshipping for years. During such occasions he also prophesied successes for the village which he also accredited to those who participated in traditional rituals to appease the traditional gods. Even Missionaries at the Coomit Mission were sometimes baffled by Opuk ingenious acts and words; however describing them as Satan powers at work. Nevertheless, they favored Anyadwe and described her as a role model of a pious Christian.

Devout laywomen raise a number of provocative questions about gender and religion in the early modern world. How did some groups or individuals evade the Tridentine legislation that required third order women to take solemn vows and observe active and passive enclosure? How did their attempts to exercise a female apostolate (albeit with varying degrees of success and assertiveness) destabilize hierarchies of class and gender? To the extent that their beliefs and practices diverged from approved doctrine and rituals, what insights can they provide into the tensions between official religion and lay religiosity? Addressing these and many other questions, Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World reflects new directions in gender history, offering a more nuanced approach to the paradigm of woman as the prototypical "disciplined" subject of church-state power.

Julian of Norwich (ca. 1343&–ca. 1416), a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Wyclif, is the earliest woman writer of English we know about. Although she described herself as &“a simple creature unlettered,&” Julian is now widely recognized as one of the great speculative theologians of the Middle Ages, whose thinking about God as love has made a permanent contribution to the tradition of Christian belief. Despite her recent popularity, however, Julian is usually read only in translation and often in extracts rather than as a whole. This book presents a much-needed new edition of Julian&’s writings in Middle English, one that makes possible the serious reading and study of her thought not just for students and scholars of Middle English but also for those with little or no previous experience with the language. &• Separate texts of both Julian&’s works, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, with modern punctuation and paragraphing and partly regularized spelling. &• A second, analytic edition of A Vision printed underneath the text of A Revelation to show what was left out, changed, or added as Julian expanded the earlier work into the later one. &• Facing-page explanatory notes, with translations of difficult words and phrases, cross-references to other parts of the text, and citations of biblical and other sources. &• A thoroughly accessible introduction to Julian&’s life and writings. &• An appendix of medieval and early modern records relating to Julian and her writings. &• An analytic bibliography of editions, translations, scholarly studies, and other works. The most distinctive feature of this volume is the editors&’ approach to the manuscripts. Middle English editions habitually retain original spellings of their base manuscript intact and only emend that manuscript when its readings make no sense. At once more interventionist and more speculative, this edition synthesizes readings from all the surviving manuscripts, with careful justification of each choice involved in this process. For readers who are not concerned with textual matters, the result will be a more readable and satisfying text. For Middle English scholars, the edition is intended both as a hypothesis and as a challenge to the assumptions the field brings to the business of editing.

Devout laywomen raise a number of provocative questions about gender and religion in the early modern world. How did some groups or individuals evade the Tridentine legislation that required third order women to take solemn vows and observe active and passive enclosure? How did their attempts to exercise a female apostolate (albeit with varying degrees of success and assertiveness) destabilize hierarchies of class and gender? To the extent that their beliefs and practices diverged from approved doctrine and rituals, what insights can they provide into the tensions between official religion and lay religiosity? Addressing these and many other questions, Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World reflects new directions in gender history, offering a more nuanced approach to the paradigm of woman as the prototypical "disciplined" subject of church-state power.

Stories of women in the Bible have been interpreted by artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and biblical commentators for centuries. However, in many cases, these later interpreters have often adapted and altered the Bible to fit their own view(s) of the stories. Ironically, these later renderings usually serve as the basis for the generally accepted view(s) of biblical women. For example, many readers of the Bible assume that Eve is to blame for the disobedient act in the Garden of Eden, or that Delilah seduced Samson and then cut his hair. A closer look at these assumptions, though, reveals that they are not based on the Bible, but are mediated through the creations of later interpreters. In this book, the author examines eight such women's stories, and shows how later readers interact with the biblical stories to construct sometimes fanciful, sometimes faulty views of these women. Dan Clanton, Jr. broadens our awareness of the influence of these later readings on how we understand biblical women so that we can be more critical in our engagement with them, and become more familiar with what the Bible actually says about the women whose stories it contains.

“This splendid reference describes every woman in Jewish and Christian scripture . . . monumental” (Library Journal). In recent decades, many biblical scholars have studied the holy text with a new focus on gender. Women in Scripture is a groundbreaking work that provides Jews, Christians, or anyone fascinated by a body of literature that has exerted a singular influence on Western civilization a thorough look at every woman and group of women mentioned in the Bible, whether named or unnamed, well known or heretofore not known at all. They are remarkably varied—from prophets to prostitutes, military heroines to musicians, deacons to dancers, widows to wet nurses, rulers to slaves. There are familiar faces, such as Eve, Judith, and Mary, seen anew with the full benefit of the most up-to-date results of biblical scholarship. But the most innovative aspect of this book is the section devoted to the many females who in the scriptures do not even have names. Combining rigorous research with engaging prose, these articles on women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament will inform, delight, and challenge readers interested in the Bible, scholars and laypeople alike. Together, these collected histories create a volume that takes the study of women in the Bible to a new level.